Communications networks are widely used for nationwide and worldwide communication of voice, multimedia and/or data. As used herein, communications networks include public communications networks, such as the Public-Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), terrestrial and/or satellite cellular networks, and/or the Internet.
The Internet is a decentralized network of computers that can communicate with one another via Internet Protocol (IP). The Internet is a packet-switched network, where data may be broken into bits (packets) such that each packet may be transmitted separately across various networks and then reassembled before delivery. Packet-switching may be highly efficient, as many packets can use the same transmission path, and may also be resilient, because packet-switching protocols may dynamically route around congested or downed network sectors. In contrast, the PSTN is a circuit-switched network, where all data may go directly to a call recipient in the correct order across a dedicated circuit. The dedicated circuit may be utilized exclusively until the call ends.
A gateway may be used to provide interoperability between circuit-switched networks (such as the PSTN) and packet-switched networks (such as the Internet). More generally, a gateway may be a network node that is equipped for interfacing with other networks that use different protocols. The gateway may include protocol translators, signal translators, and/or access equipment as necessary to provide system interoperability. For example, an access multiplexer may be employed as a gateway device. An access multiplexer is a network device that receives signals from multiple customer lines and puts the signals on one or more high-speed backbone lines using multiplexing techniques.
Voice-Over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) is a packet-based voice service that is increasingly being provided by telecommunications service providers. In VoIP, voice communications may be digitized and transmitted in small data packets to the intended recipients over a packet-switched network. Accordingly, in order to implement VoIP services, many telecommunications service providers may wish to replace traditional Class-5 switches in existing telephone networks with access multiplexers including gateway functionality. More particularly, an access multiplexer with gateway functionality may be used to provide VoIP service to customers by connecting them to VoIP feature servers available in the packet-switched network. However, it may be difficult to implement such a transition without impact on existing customer services.
For example, *98 service is an existing advanced intelligent network (AIN) service which allows customers to call into their voicemail from their home phone number directly by dialing *98. However, not all VoIP feature servers may be configured to support *98 voicemail service. As such, in order for existing customers to continue to access voicemail by dialing *98, VoIP feature server vendors may be required to develop a custom *98 service, which may be costly for telephone service providers. Alternatively, as most VoIP feature servers may support *XX feature code dialing and/or *XX speed dialing, telephone service providers may provision *98 using the *XX feature to forward calls to a customer's voicemail portal. However, in such a solution, a customer may be able to change the settings associated with *98 on the VoIP feature servers via their telephone user interface. Consequently, a customer may inadvertently deactivate *98 service. Also, such provisioning may limit the full feature capability offered by *XX feature code dialing and/or *XX speed dialing provided by the VoIP feature servers.